The Emergence of Black English

Text and commentary

Editors

Guy Bailey | Oklahoma State Univ.

Natalie Maynor | Mississippi State Univ.

Patricia Cukor-Avila | University of Houston

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027252289 (Eur) | EUR 125.00

ISBN 9781556191619 (USA) | USD 188.00

Paperback – Available

ISBN 9789027252302 (Eur) | EUR 36.00

ISBN 9781556191633 (USA) | USD 54.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027277831 | EUR 125.00/36.00*
| USD 188.00/54.00*

Debate over the evolution of Black English Vernacular (BEV) has permeated Afro-American studies, creole linguistics, dialectology, and sociolinguistics for a quarter of a century with little sign of a satisfactory resolution, primarily because evidence that bears directly on the earlier stages of BEV is sparse. This book brings together 11 transcripts of mechanical recordings of interviews with former slaves born well over a century ago. It attempts to make this crucial source of data as widely known as possible and to explore its importance for the study of Black English Vernacular in view of various problems of textual composition and interpretation. It does so by providing a complete description of the contents of the recordings, by providing transcripts of most of the contents, and by publishing a group of interpretive essays which examine the data in the light of other relevant historical, cultural, social, and linguistic evidence and which provide contexts for interpretation and analysis. In these essays a group of diverse scholars on BEV analyze the same texts for the first time; the lack of consensus that emerges may seem surprising, but in fact highlights some of the basic problems of textual composition and interpretation and of scholarly dispositions that underlie the study of BEV. The papers raise crucial questions about the evolution of BEV, about its relationship to other varieties, and, most important, about the construction and interpretation of linguistic texts.

[Creole Language Library, 8] 1991. x, 352 pp.

Publishing status:

https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.8

Table of Contents

Speaking of Slavery: The Historical Value of the Recordings with Former Slaves

Paul D. Escott | p. 123

Slave Narratives, Slave Culture, and the Slave Experience

Joe Graham | p. 133

Songs, Sermons, and Life Stories: The Legacy of the Ex-Slave Narratives

Jeutonne P. Brewer | p. 155

The Linguistic Value of the Ex-Slave Recordings

Michael Montgomery | p. 173

Representativeness and Reliability of the Ex-Slave Materials, With Special Reference to Wallace Quarterman’s Recording and Transcript

John R. Rickford | p. 191

Is Gullah Decreolizing? A Comparison of a Speech Sample of the 1930s with a Sample of the 1980s

Salikoko S. Mufwene | p. 213

The Atlantic Creoles and the Language of the Ex-Slave Recordings

John Holm | p. 231

Liberian Settler English and the Ex-Slave Recordings: A Comprative Study

John Victor Singler | p. 249

There’s No Tense Like the Present: Verbal — S Inflection in Early Black English

Shana Poplack and Sali A. Tagliamonte | p. 275

Appendix | p. 327

List of Contributors | p. 351

Cited by (65)

Cited by 65 other publications

Order by:

Kimbara, Irene

2024. The Representation of Earlier African American Vernacular English by Charles W. Chesnutt. American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage ► pp. 1 ff.

Bailey, Guy, Patricia Cukor-Avila & Juan Salinas

2022. Inheritance and Innovation in the Evolution of Rural African American English,

Kytö, Merja & Lucia Siebers

2022. Earlier North American Englishes. In Earlier North American Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G66], ► pp. 1 ff.

Farrington, Charlie, Sharese King & Mary Kohn

2021. Sources of variation in the speech of African Americans: Perspectives from sociophonetics. WIREs Cognitive Science 12:3

Hickey, Raymond

2021. Dialect Contact and the Emergence of New Varieties of English. In English and Spanish, ► pp. 53 ff.

Danae Perez, Marianne Hundt, Johannes Kabatek & Daniel Schreier

2021. English and Spanish,

Rees-Miller, Janie

2021. Chapter 20. A-prefixing in the ex-slave narratives. In All Things Morphology [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 353], ► pp. 377 ff.

Cukor-Avila, Patricia & Ashley Balcazar

2019. Exploring Grammatical Variation in the Corpus of Regional African American Language. American Speech 94:1 ► pp. 36 ff.

Green, Lisa & Ayana Whitmal

2019. Viewing Ex-Slave Narratives from a Different Angle. In The Routledge Companion to the Work of John R. Rickford, ► pp. 100 ff.

Kautzsch, Alexander

2019. Chapter 11. Morphosyntactic features in earlier African American English. In Keeping in Touch [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 10],

Kautzsch, Alexander

2022. Dialect in early African American plays. In Earlier North American Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G66], ► pp. 65 ff.

Kytö, Merja

2019. English in North America. In The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, ► pp. 160 ff.

McLarty, Jason

2018. African American Language and European American English Intonation Variation Over Time in The American South. American Speech 93:1 ► pp. 32 ff.

Wolfram, Walt

2018. Changing Ethnolinguistic Perceptions In The South. American Speech 93:3-4 ► pp. 344 ff.

Wolfram, Walt

2019. African‐American English. In The Handbook of World Englishes, ► pp. 314 ff.

Spears, Arthur K.

2017. Unstressedbeen: Past and Present in African American English. American Speech 92:2 ► pp. 151 ff.

Van Herk, Gerard

2017. Working With and Preserving Existing Data. In Data Collection in Sociolinguistics, ► pp. 165 ff.

Denis, Derek

2016. Oral Histories as a Window to Sociolinguistic History and Language History: Exploring Earlier Ontario English with the Farm Work and Farm Life Since 1890 Oral History Collection. American Speech 91:4 ► pp. 513 ff.

Moody, Simanique

2015. New Perspectives on African American English: The Role of Black-to-Black Contact. English Today 31:4 ► pp. 53 ff.

Miethaner, Ulrich

2014. Innovation in pre-World War II AAVE?. In The Evolution of Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G49], ► pp. 365 ff.

Oetting, Janna B. & Brandi L. Newkirk

2011. Children's relative clause markers in two non-mainstream dialects of English. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 25:8 ► pp. 725 ff.

van Hofwegen, Janneke

2010. Apparent-time evolution of /l/ in one African American community. Language Variation and Change 22:3 ► pp. 373 ff.

WHITE-SUSTAITA, JESSICA

2010. Reconsidering the syntax of non-canonical negative inversion. English Language and Linguistics 14:3 ► pp. 429 ff.

COGGSHALL, ELIZABETH L. & KARA BECKER

2009. THE VOWEL PHONOLOGIES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND WHITE NEW YORK CITY RESIDENTS. The Publication of the American Dialect Society 94:1 ► pp. 101 ff.

Hackert, Stephanie

2008. Counting and coding the past: Circumscribing the variable context in quantitative analyses of past inflection. Language Variation and Change 20:1 ► pp. 127 ff.

Hackert, Stephanie

2022. The epicentre model and American influence on Bahamian Englishes. World Englishes 41:3 ► pp. 361 ff.

Sutcliffe, David

2007. ON THE NATURE OF CREOLES AND THEIR HALF-SISTERS UNDER THE SKIN. American Speech 82:2 ► pp. 205 ff.

Thomas, Erik R.

2007. Phonological and Phonetic Characteristics of African American Vernacular English. Language and Linguistics Compass 1:5 ► pp. 450 ff.

Thomas, Erik R.

2017. Analysis of the Ex-Slave Recordings. In Listening to the Past, ► pp. 350 ff.

Weldon, Tracey L.

2007. GULLAH NEGATION: A VARIABLE ANALYSIS. American Speech 82:4 ► pp. 341 ff.

Rickford, John R.

2006. AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH: ROOTS AND BRANCHES. In English and Ethnicity, ► pp. 259 ff.

Schneider, Edgar W. & Ulrich Miethaner

2006. When I started to using BLUR. Journal of English Linguistics 34:3 ► pp. 233 ff.

BAILEY, GUY, JAN TILLERY & CLAIRE ANDRES

2005. SOME EFFECTS OF TRANSCRIBERS ON DATA IN DIALECTOLOGY. American Speech 80:1 ► pp. 3 ff.

Major, Roy C., Susan M. Fitzmaurice, Ferenc Bunta & Chandrika Balasubramanian

2005. Testing the Effects of Regional, Ethnic, and International Dialects of English on Listening Comprehension. Language Learning 55:1 ► pp. 37 ff.

Schneider, Edgar W.

2004. Investigating Variation and Change in Written Documents. In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ► pp. 67 ff.

Schneider, Edgar W.

2006. Review of Minnick (2004): Dialect and dichotomy. Literary representations of African American speech. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 21:2 ► pp. 377 ff.

Schneider, Edgar W.

2013. Investigating Historical Variation and Change in Written Documents. In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ► pp. 57 ff.

MONTGOMERY, MICHAEL

2003. THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH. The Publication of the American Dialect Society 88:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Stephen J. Nagle & Sara L. Sanders

2003. English in the Southern United States,

Tillery, Jan & Guy Bailey

2003. Approaches to Real Time in Dialectology and Sociolinguistics. World Englishes 22:4 ► pp. 351 ff.

Hazen, Kirk

2002. Reviews: The English History of African American English. Journal of English Linguistics 30:3 ► pp. 284 ff.

HAZEN, KIRK

2003. AAVE STATE OF THE ART CONFERENCE;Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English. American Speech 78:1 ► pp. 103 ff.

SCHNEIDER, EDGAR W. & MICHAEL B. MONTGOMERY

2001. ON THE TRAIL OF EARLY NONSTANDARD GRAMMAR: AN ELECTRONIC CORPUS OF SOUTHERN U.S. ANTEBELLUM OVERSEERS' LETTERS. American Speech 76:4 ► pp. 388 ff.

McWhorter, John

2000. Review article:Strange bedfellows. Diachronica 17:2 ► pp. 389 ff.

McWhorter, John

2019. The ‘Aks’ of its Day?. In The Routledge Companion to the Work of John R. Rickford, ► pp. 90 ff.

McWhorter, John

2020. Revisiting Invariant am in Early African American Vernacular English. American Speech 95:4 ► pp. 379 ff.

Cukor-Avila, Patricia

1999. Stativity and Copula Absence in AAVE. Journal of English Linguistics 27:4 ► pp. 341 ff.

Baugh, John

1998. Traute Ewers, The origin of American Black English: Be-forms in the HOODOO texts. (Topics in English Linguistics, 15.) Mounton de Gruyter, 1996. Pp. xi, 327. Hb DM 158.00.. Language in Society 27:2 ► pp. 270 ff.

Howe, Darin M.

1997. Negation and the history of African American English. Language Variation and Change 9:2 ► pp. 267 ff.

Tottie, Gunnel & Michel Rey

1997. Relativization strategies in Earlier African American Vernacular English. Language Variation and Change 9:2 ► pp. 219 ff.

Wald, Benji

1995. The problem of scholarly predisposition: G. Bailey, N. Maynor, & P. Cukor-Avila, eds., The emergence of Black English: Text and commentary. Language in Society 24:2 ► pp. 245 ff.

Nichols, Patricia C.

1994. Review of Cunningham (1992): A syntactic analysis of Sea Island Creole. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 9:1 ► pp. 187 ff.

Orbe, Mark P.

1994. “Remember, it's always whites' ball”: Descriptions of African American male communication. Communication Quarterly 42:3 ► pp. 287 ff.

Orbe, Mark P.

1995. African American communication research: Toward a deeper understanding of interethnic communication. Western Journal of Communication 59:1 ► pp. 61 ff.

Portes, Alejandro & Richard Schauffler

1994. Language and the Second Generation: Bilingualism Yesterday and Today. International Migration Review 28:4 ► pp. 640 ff.

Schilling-Estes, Natalie & Walt Wolfram

1994. Convergent explanation and alternative regularization patterns:Were/weren'tleveling in a vernacular English variety. Language Variation and Change 6:3 ► pp. 273 ff.

Holm, John

1992. Review of Lalla & D’Costa (1990): Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 13:1 ► pp. 134 ff.

Holm, John

2003. Languages in Contact,

Winford, Donald

1992. Back to the past: The BEV/creole connection revisited. Language Variation and Change 4:3 ► pp. 311 ff.

Poplack, Shana & Sali Tagliamonte

1989. There's no tense like the present: Verbal -sinflection in early Black English. Language Variation and Change 1:1 ► pp. 47 ff.

Poplack, Shana & Sali Tagliamonte

1991. African American English in the diaspora: Evidence from old-line Nova Scotians. Language Variation and Change 3:3 ► pp. 301 ff.

[no author supplied]

2001. REFERENCES. The Publication of the American Dialect Society 85:1 ► pp. 207 ff.

[no author supplied]

2002. References. In The Development of African American English, ► pp. 213 ff.

[no author supplied]

2013. Reference Guide for Varieties of English. In A Dictionary of Varieties of English, ► pp. 363 ff.

[no author supplied]

2015. References. In Making Waves, ► pp. 194 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects